Like Being Stuck Between a Princess and a Tin Man
by ASolidSecond
Summary: Jeb's been given a message to give to his father from the Princess. The "missing" chapter from "Never the End".


**A/N: This just a one-shot deviation from my story "Never the End" mainly written because my readers wanted to know what happened between Jeb and his Father at the end of one of the chapters. Here's to you KLCtheBookWorm and all the others! For anyone who has read the other story, you should be fine, but hey why not go read a few chapters of it anyways!**

She turned the corner to her bedroom, and not surprisingly there was someone standing outside her door, back turned.

"Wyatt Cain! I don't care what you might think, but guarding me in my room when I'm not there is going a bit far! Now go," the figure turned, "Aw crap."

"Sorry Princess," Jeb Cain said. "I was just…"

"No it's okay, don't apologize." _Criminy, I really have to start looking closer when I'm sleep deprived. Well, that and they need to stop switching places on me._ "You can go back to your quarters Jeb. I swear I'm so exhausted I'll be lucky if I make it to the bed before I collapse and I don't sleep walk, so there will be very few shenanigans to get into for a few hours at least. Just go tell that grumpy old Tin Man he's not to leave the palace, no disappearing this time."

"You want me to tell him he's not allowed to leave?" Jeb, the young man who had seen so much in his few short years, seen families destroyed, over seen an entire regiment of resistance soldiers and led men into battle, looked genuinely terrified at the prospect of passing on a simple message.

DG let out an exasperated sigh, "If he gets difficult, just tell him it an order and use a few more official sounding words, big words. And you can then tell him to bring it up with me if he's got a problem."

"Yes, your highness. I'll do my best."

DG turned the handle to her room, but paused for one more moment. "Oh and Jeb? You can also tell his royal crotchety mucky-muck that, since I know he _will_ have a problem with it, that God help me if he wakes me up he will get a pillow lodged in that thick skull of his."

"Will do 'mam," Jeb said with an informal bow as he backed up and turned to walk down the hall _This is one hallway I will be avoiding for the next twenty-four hours._

"This is not going to be fun," Jeb Cain thought as he forced his self to wander the corridors of the palace as aimlessly as a person like him, who was supposed to know them like the back of his hand, could. "She's definitely a little fireball, that one. It must have been all that up bringing on the other side, messed with her head. I mean, is she really not afraid of him?"

That couldn't be right, everyone and that was including everyone, was afraid of his father, Wyatt Cain, ex- Tin Man. Even after all those years when Jeb, his mother and the rest of the world thought him dead, the memory of Cain could ignite fear in those who had known him.

_Wyatt Cain? That man could melt lead with that stare of his,_ one grizzled old veteran had shared with Jeb when he was about thirteen. Jeb had believed this, remembering a few times childhood curiosity and carelessness had ended him up on the wrong side of his fathers temper. However, even thirteen year old idolizing Jeb refused to believe in the rumor that his father could turn a bullet with only his thoughts.

There were the truths that were said about his father; his loyalty, his sense of right and wrong, his physical strength and gun slinging abilities were all made into examples for the resistance fighters. Wyatt Cain, a man who would and had risked everything for what he believed in and those he loved.

There had been times when Jeb had resented his father for what had happened that day in the cabin and after, but he couldn't hold on to those feelings for long. Even when Cain had returned, looking too familiar and different at the same time, Jeb could not hold on to his bitterness. His father was simply a good man.

"Yeah well," Jeb whispered to him self as he passed the scullery for the second time. "He might be a good man, but he's frightening. Especially in the mood he's in now."

Jeb hadn't dared to tell the Princess that her father had actually came home a full day earlier than what she knew. If this was her mad at him now, he didn't want to imagine it any worse. He had come barging into the quarters the Queen had given the Cain men; dirty and ragged from the road. For a moment Jeb had thought there was something wrong, an emergency of some sort, but all that was forgotten in the embrace his father (not the hugging type) wrapped around him. Jeb had asked what was wrong; taken aback by this sudden appearance and burst of emotion. Cain had simply gripped his son's shoulder, holding him an arms length away and grinned. Yep, there was no better way to say it, Wyatt Cain was grinning from ear to ear. Cain had seemed to struggle with words for a moment and then just gave Jeb's shoulder a push and disappeared into his quarters.

He appeared a half hour later, cleaned and shaven and still grinning. Jeb was now concerned; perhaps he had been bewitched somewhere out on the road. Luckily it was not to last, Cain (still grinning) marched straight to the doors, swung them open wide and… paused. He must have stood there for five minutes perfectly still, hands still on the door frames, before he moved again. His shoulders sagged and he turned, head actually hanging and returned to his room. Jeb hadn't seen him until the next day, with the Princess. Strangely enough when his father was summoned to the Princess, he appeared donning the clothing he had rode in on the day before, still haggard and filthy.

Jeb tried not to think of it all, for in reality in kind of made his head hurt and he was afraid he was in for another round of it.

Jeb slowly opened the door though he knew what was waiting for him on the inside and there it was. His father was standing, sans duster and hat finally, on the balcony. Jeb walked to his side.

_Let him make the first move,_ Jeb thought.

That didn't take long.

"So you went and checked on her correct?" The usual stiff gruffness was back in his voice, as he continued to stare out at the lake. Jeb knew this tone; he was getting debriefed on a mission.

"Yes, sir."

"And?"

"And…" Jeb couldn't help it, but he audibly gulped. Cain turned his head slightly so that Jeb was firmly in his peripheral vision.

"I'll reckon a guess," he said. "She's not pleased?"

Jeb shook his head and listened as his father let out a long breath.

"Well, better tell me all of it. I don't hurt the innocent." Jeb knew he meant this as a joke and in any other situation it would have just been comical that his father had attempted humor, but not now.

It was Jeb's turn to breathe deep. _Quickly now and it will all be over soon_.

"Well first, she confused me for you and I guess it's no real surprise that she doesn't appreciate being followed." Cain made a small noise, but what it meant Jeb couldn't tell. "Then she promised that she was going right to bed and wouldn't be at risk for getting into trouble. So I took my leave and…"

Cain leaned his hands on to the balcony railing, "And then what son?"

"And then she said that you're under orders to stay put." Jeb all but literally spit out the words and saw his fathers' knuckles go white.

"And?"

_Best to leave the part about the big, official sounding words out of it_, Jeb thought quickly and then tried to stifle a snicker. _Also the, how did she put it? Ahh yes…his royal crotchety mucky-muck … golden._

"And that if you were in a state to argue her point that you could bring the matter up with her. Though I should warn you, Father, that if you do plan to do so she has quite the imagination for painful deaths involving down feathered pillows as projectile weapons and that you should try your best to wait until morning as to avoid such a fate."

Quiet hung between the two Cain men and Jeb was not about to stir first, in case his father's pent up aggression suddenly became movement based. In time Cain released the railings and gave his son a brief pat on the shoulder and muttered something along the line of, "You did well, son." He turned and surprisingly returned to his room.

Jeb did like wise, finally relaxing and barricaded himself in his quarters.

It was only a half hour before Jeb could hear his father pacing.

It was an hour before Jeb herd the fervent but stifled muttering of the conversation that Cain was holding with himself in the adjacent room.

At some point afterwards Jeb was certain he heard the dull thud of a fist going into a wall.

Two hours after the message had been delivered Jeb finally heard the door to his fathers' room open and shut, followed by the same motion with their main door, both being slammed harshly closed.

Jeb closed his eyes and finally allowed his self to think of sleep and smiled as he thought that this might be the first mission he was more than willing to sit out.

_God willing, _he thought as he drifted off_, __the daft old man remembers my warning so that she won't try to kill him. __ And God willing, t__hey'll both come to their senses soon and figure out what the rest of us already know._

**A/N: hope you enjoyed... please drop a message in the review box if you did!**


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